Sunday, February 21, 2010

Finding your niche

Everyone needs to have a marketing niche, or two. Replacing shovel handles may be a narrow niche, but it might not be a tiny one. The sign shown above is in Meridian, which is west of Boise and at one edge of Ada County. There are about 1200 farms in Ada County. Adjacent Canyon County has almost 2000 farms, the most for any county in Idaho. How many shovels does a farm use?

An article in the May 15, 2008 issue of Business Week discussed how Best Buy found some unexpected marketing niches, like a retiree club near Mooresville, North Carolina (for digital TV sets), and sailors from Eastern European ships visiting their Baytown, Texas store (for Apple iPods and laptop computers).

Fear of public speaking is one topical niche for this blog. If you scroll to the bottom of the page and click the label for Surveys you will see 15 posts ranging from humorous to serious.

Susan Friedmann has been on the board of the National Speakers Association and is a Certified Speaking Professional. She has carved out a career niche in speaking, writing, and blogging about niche marketing. In 2007 Susan published a book on Riches in Niches (How to make it BIG in a small market). In 2009 she published another, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Target Marketing.

About Me

This blog is about public speaking. The author is Richard I. Garber, ACS, a Toastmaster. From July 2008 to June 2010 he was Vice President-Education for Capitol Club Toastmasters in Boise, Idaho. Opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author alone, and are not the official positions of Toastmasters International, etc.
Richard is retired. He has over twenty years of experience as a consultant on failure analysis (figuring out why things busted or rusted) and a Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering & Materials Science.
His email is r_i_garber at hotmail.com

DISCLAIMER

We don’t necessarily believe what we write, and neither should you. Information furnished to you is for topical (external) use only. This information actually may not be worth any more than what you paid for it (nothing). The author may not even have been either sane (or sober) when he wrote it down and posted it. Don’t worry, be happy.